Seeking Rock Bottom: Pitcher K’s

In Commentary And Analysis by GW31 Comments

Ahh… the Hendry Era. The Cubs were always winning, the best players were beloved by the media and treated with respect by the front office, player acquisitions were always based on sound analytical wisdom, and Order prevailed in its eternal conflict with Chaos. Wait, what’s wrong with these…?

/cleans fogged up sepia-tinted Transitions Lenses

It’s all this damn Texas sunlight. I can’t keep all these pages straight on my laptop.

/closes Baen Library fantasy ebook and goes back to spreadsheet

Oh, right. None of those things were true, but at least the pitching staff struck people out. Even after the utter destruction of the ’04 “OMG, Best Pitching Staff Ever”, the Cubs managed to remain solidly above average every year through 2009. All the names from those staffs are familiar, so I won’t bother going through the all the Lillies, Gorzelannies, and lack of Dolises. I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to talk about the trend. That ominous trend. From a peak in 2003 to a valley from which purchase may never be gained. That horrible, encroaching darkness that has been slowly stretching its tentacles over the land. Dammit. Why does this ebook keep popping up? Must be some kind of fantasy-hobbit virus. Here is what I’m trying to lay out for you:

And you might not have heard about the minor leagues, I guess, if your wifi has been spotty lately or something. Mine has been great, though, so I don’t know what you are complaining about. I guess not everybody gets my kind of coverage. I’ve been there, though. Hell, I remember a time when “broad band” was a nothing but a musical genre. Groups of upstarts playing swing and the like. It was like big band, but instead of trombones they had Moogs. Gave it a prog feel, like ELP playing a Vegas high school prom. Never really took off; it was mostly a regional thing. Anyways, if you haven’t been paying attention, the minor league pitching sucks now, too, so it’s probably not getting better any time soon. Iowa is doing OK, but DJ told me I shouldn’t pay attention to them. And I trust DJ, even though he never links to his posts in the old thread…

All that wouldn’t even matter if the league would just get worse, but strikeouts are way up elsewhere. In fact, I’ve identified a key factor which indicates that they will stay up.

I reached out to Tom Ricketts for comment, but he was in a meeting with some sort of personal statistical guru. He emailed me later, though.

Share this Post

Comments

  2. Mucker

    Is Rothschild still with Yankees? Are their pitchers striking batters out more? I’d be curious to see what affect he had on them.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  6. mb21

    @ Mucker:
    I’ll look into that in the next few weeks. I did look at the pitchers in Florida and Chicago (before he left) and overall they improved at striking batters out, walking fewer batters and actually giving up fewer home runs. Could be a coincidence, but Rothschild seemed a fan of defense independent pitching stats.

    I did use K/9 and BB/9. If I was going to do it again I’d look at BB% and K%, but I didn’t realize at the time how much more reliable those two percentages were than the per 9 rates. Considering how long he’s been a pitching coach I doubt it would change the results.

    I hadn’t though about looking a the Yankees, but I’ll do that. He’s been there nearly 2 years, right?

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  8. mb21

    Looking only at CC Sabathia you’ll see he’s struckout more and walked fewer. Sabathia’s 2 best K% have been the last two seasons (same with K/9). He hasn’t had the best BB% of his career the last two years, but it’s considerably lower than the previous two and lower than his career.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  11. Edwin

    @ mb21:

    Is it possible that part of CC’s success is due to pitching in a higher K% enviroment? I know the league wide K% for pitchers has been trending up. Which is why it’s even more troubling that the Cubs are trending down.

    I looked up pitch usage and velocity year by year for the Cubs to see if there were any big shifts. There didn’t seem to be. In 2003 the average FB velocity for a Cubs starter was 92.5. It dropped as low as 89.7 in 2006. This year it’s 91.2. Nationals starting pitchers this year are averageing 93.6 on their fastballs.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  12. mb21

    @ Edwin:
    It’s entirely possible the increase I found in strikeouts is due to the league wide increase in strikeouts. I have no idea about CC. I just looked at one Yankee to get an idea. I’m positive if we looked at others we’d see the opposite, but overall I wonder what the difference is. There are a lot of things I would need to control for if I wanted to do an exhaustive study on Rothschild’s affects on strikeout, walk and home run rate. For one thing I’d have to consider age and to be honest, I’m not even sure what the pitcher aging curve says about strikeouts and walks. My guess would be that they’d strike fewer out past their prime and walk more, but that’s just a wild guess. Considering the age of many of the pitchers I looked at, and using that wild ass guess, it would seem that whatever strikeout/walk rate improvement would be real even if we factored in league wide rates. But I don’t know.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  17. Mercurial Outfielder

    Am I the only one worried that the Cubs are going to end up paying F7 for what could well be a fluky season?

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  20. mb21

    @ Rice Cube:
    He’ll be eligible for the first time this offseason. Considering what he was already making he’s likely to get about $4-5 million in his first year of arbitration. That’s ridiculously high for someone with his track record.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  21. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:
    Yeah between the injury risk (in uncharted waters IP-wise), the unreliability of his numbers, and the fact that even when he is “on” he is still hittable…I just don’t want to spend a lot of money on him.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  24. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Rice Cube:
    Yeah, that’s what I’d do, but I’d have tried to deal him at the deadline. The fact they didn’t even appear to attempt it is what make me worry that an extension is in the offing.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  27. Rice Cube

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I think there was a story (forgot who) talking about how everyone on the Cubs was tradeable except for F7 and Castro. I figured they were trying to develop F7 to see what they had before trading him and I don’t think that means they’re hell bent on an extension even though that is definitely a possibility.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0

Leave a Comment